A GIS Study of the Possibilitles Of Recreation - Sport Mountaineering in Rural Tourism of the Province of Mazandaran

In spite of having ample natural resouree for development, villages in Iran are facing economic difficulties that necessitate searching for complementary economic project to compensate the existing shortcomings. Recreation - sport mountaineering is one of such projects. This Type of project within the rural Tourist activities is one of the most popular activities. It appears that although this project offers many promising opportunities in rural tourism, but unfortunately little attention has been paid to it, whereas, once adopted, it may result an extensive economic rewards. The province of Mazandaran is distinct amongst all Iranian provinces, because of its unique physical characters such as relief, climate, sea shores forests, vegetation and etc. All part of this area are valuable as being favourable and attractive for tourism. But the question is that such natural resources have not been duly recognised in the rural tourism of the province. That is why it must be made clear that recreation sport - mountaineerings, potentially is an important and profitable complementary activity in the province’s rural tourism. Therefore, the present project was adopted with the aim of recognizing the part of the province that are most favourable for recreation -sport mountaineering by application of GIS system. Villages considered suitable for this purpose were selected and studied by GIS system in two stages: first, from altitude point of view, namely below 500, 500 to 1,000 and 1,000 to1500 meters, and second, population composition, namely villages with below and above 20 families. The result were assessed from four angles: number of villageas, population composition, number of families and road accessibility for rural tourism. The method used in the study was descriptive with GIS analysis. The results obtained from the study has shown that the province of Mazandaran is quite suitable and could offere valuable opportunities practice for recreation – sport mountaineering in its rural tourism. Finally proposals were suggested on the basis of obtained results.